The more we learn about the influences that shaped the president’s chief strategist, the less red-blooded American they seem. Photo: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty ImagesIn the background of the daily political grind, there has been a back-and-forth battle of narratives over Trump’s senior strategist Stephen Bannon. The reason is pretty obvious: He (and his protégés in the White House) is the living link between Donald Trump and a netherworld of previously marginal people known as “nationalists” or “populists” or the “alt-right.” Trump supporters naturally want to mainstream Bannon, and his former bailiwick at Breitbart, as much as possible, while excluding entirely from the charmed circle of real influence the white-identity-politics types and open racists who are so present on social media and other gathering points for the mogul’s most avid fans.

So it’s of more than passing interest when Bannon himself tells the story (via The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender) of his own radicalization. When financial markets collapsed in 2008, Bannon, then just your average investment banker with a taste for conspiracy theory filmmaking, watched helplessly as his elderly father authorized a panic sale of stock in the company he served for many years, AT&T. None of Bannon junior’s Wall Street buddies went to jail for the betrayal of people like Bannon senior, and thus was born Stephen Bannon as a “divisive political firebrand.”

It’s a sad and heartwarming story. But a counter-narrative stubbornly keeps emerging of Bannon’s intellectual interests having as big an impact on his political thinking as that single incident in 2008. And two examples involve French writers from that country’s royalist and often racist authoritarian Right.

First HuffPost unearthed multiple recent examples of Bannon favorably citing Jean Raspail’s 1973 novel, Le Camp Des Saints (The Camp of the Saints), as a prophecy for the crisis facing Western countries in the form of immigrants and refugees pouring in from non-developed, nonwhite, non-Christian countries. While it may or may not be fair to call Raspail a racist or a fascist (he rejects the label, but does confess to being a royalist), the whole thrust of his novel was to scorn the suicidal liberalism of modern Europe as compared to the “healthier” murderous impulses of self-respecting white Christians ranging from the crusaders to the Ku Klux Klan. And the book’s central presentation of Asian refugees as an existential threat to Western Civilization makes it a rather alarming source of inspiration for anyone close to actual power. It does, on the other hand, help explain the over-the-top obsession of Breitbart with refugee and immigration policy to this day.

But it seems Bannon’s French quasi-fascist influences significantly predate Raspail. In a recent profile of the man’s attitude toward Europe, Michael Crowley discovers a more exotic role model:

Bannon has also expressed admiration for the reactionary French philosopher Charles Maurras, according to French media reports confirmed by Politico. Maurras, like Bannon, was a Catholic nationalist, and he argued in the early 1900s that the Enlightenment had elevated the individual over the nation. (One person who knows Bannon said he has spoken of the coming end of the Enlightenment.) To Maurras, a hero of the modern French right wing, the French Revolution ideals of “liberty, equality and fraternity” were a liberal cosmopolitan corruption of France’s authentic identity. Bannon has approvingly cited Maurras’ distinction between the “legal country,” led by elected officials, and the “real country” of ordinary people, as a frame for the populist revolt underway. Maurras even warned about the nefarious influence of Islam in Europe.As Pema Levy points out at Mother Jones, Crowley’s description of Maurras omits a rather crucial issue: He and his Action Francaise organization were inveterate anti-Semites who proposed a classically fascist political and economic order. Those who, like me, have read Ernst Nolte’s classic study Three Faces of Fascism, think of Maurras as having pioneered many of the dogmas and practices later made catastrophically important by Mussolini and Hitler. And while Maurras was too much of a German-hating French nationalist to support Adolph Hitler, he did become an enthusiastic supporter of the Vichy regime after France’s defeat in World War II, and was subsequently imprisoned for collaboration with the Nazis.

So at what point do Bannon’s rather disreputable influences become relevant to the advice he is offering Donald Trump? That’s hard to say. But as long as he’s citing thinkers like Maurras, it’s going to be hard for him to disavow the white-nationalist label, or worse.http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... cists.html

He’s handsome. He’s well spoken. Has a stellar CV. Was confirmed by a unanimous vote for his current job. And we’re going to hear lots of people say awesome things about him during his confirmation hearings.

But Neil Gorsuch is a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”. Neil Gorsuch will destroy America. At least the America most Americans know and love

Here are just 7 of many reasons why:

1. It’s in his DNA.

Neil’s mother Ann Burford Gorsuch tried to destroy the EPA as EPA Administrator by cutting its budget and simply refusing to file cases against polluters because she, like Bannon, was “a firm believer that the federal government was too big, too powerful and too eager to issue regulations that restricted businesses.” She resigned in disgrace in 1983 after a scandal.

2. He was a smartass kid who publically dreamed of destroying America

Young Neil literally joked about being the “President of The Fascism Forever Club” in his high school yearbook, exactly in the mode of Steven Miller, the Trump adviser and speechwriter who wrote both Unconstitutional Muslim travel bans. Yeah, that guy who went on national television and - like a proud Fascist - said with a straight face “The President’s power shall not be questioned”. Steve Bannon chose him too.

Gorsuch has dreamed of destroying America since he was a kid. Sounds crazy, right, but how else does one interpret that, of all the things he could put as a quote to celebrate his graduation from high school, Neil chose Henry Kissinger’s horrifying one, “The illegal we do immediately. the unconstitutional takes a little longer.”

Really. Here’s the photo. Who says stuff like that at age 17? And guess what? If confirmed, this same Neil Gorsuch will be one of 5 human beings on the planet to determine what is “illegal” and what is “unconstitutional” for The United States of America for the next 20, 30, 40 or even more years! Well done, Neil.

3. Women will soon be dying from back alley abortions again.

Really. Gorsuch will overturn “Roe v. Wade” and make abortion illegal again in America. And maybe also “penalize” women for having abortions, something Donald Trump actually promised during the campaign.

4. Gay marriage will once again be illegal.

Really. 5 Supreme Court Justices can reverse the 2015 opinion that made gay marriage legal. If Gorsuch is confirmed, there will be 4 committed to doing so. With one more Bannon/Trump pick, there will be 5.

5. Neil will be in a position to finish the job that mom Ann didn’t get to finish

Neil Gorsuch will destroy what is left of the EPA and smile broadly as corporations are once again allowed to pour toxic chemicals into rivers in towns across America, industries are allowed to pour unlimited greenhouse gas into the air, clearcut forests, and convert the natural resources of our country into awesome corporate profit.

6. But destroying the environment is just the beginning. The man who chose Neil, Steve Bannon, literally wants to “destroy everything”.

Yes, the most important man in The Trump Whitehouse, Donald Trump’s “Chief Strategist”, the guy who put himself on The National Security Council without even telling Trump - that guy - actually said the following.

“I’m a Leninist . . .Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

Yes, he actually said that. And he is doing it with every appointment he gets Trump to make.

Bannon chose someone who vowed, on national television, to eliminate The Energy Department, to “run” The Energy Department, Gov. Rick Perry.

Bannon chose someone who hates public education, Betsy DeVos, to destroy the Department of Education

Bannon chose Rex Tilerson to help gut The State Department and the current international order of treaties, trade pacts and alliances that has kept the world relatively safe since World War II.

And, on March 13, Bannon took the next step in his plan to “Deconstruct ‘The Administrative State” as he got Donald Trump to sign yet another Executive Order, this time to “Restructure The Executive Branch” in order to cripple or shut down almost every regulatory function and agency that protects America and Americans

But The Holy Grail of Presidential Appointments is when a President gets to fill a seat on The United States Supreme Court. There, Bannon/Trump’s appointee can literally decree that anything and everything that Steve Bannon and Donald Trump are doing . . . and want to do . . . is “Legal” and “Constitutional”. And whatever The Supreme Court says becomes “The Law” in The United States. Period.

Neil Gorsuch can do that for Bannon. Neil Gorsuch will do that for Bannon.

7. Neil Gorsuch Is THE Leading Judge in America on “Deconstructing The Administrative State”. That’s The Main Reason Steve Bannon Chose Him

In 2016 Judge Gorsuch wrote an opinion that surely caught the eye of Steve Bannon. This opinion, in Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, is THE case that will be used by The Supreme Court to “Deconstruct ‘The Administrative State’”. It rips away much of the authority of Executive Branch agencies like The EPA, The FDA, HUD, The FCC, The FEC , Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and many others, to create and enforce the “regulations” that Conservative Republicans so hate Instead, Gorsuch says that judges and courts should be the ones to interpret even the most minute aspects of every law that Congress passes.

Want to stop companies from pouring toxic chemicals into rivers? Nope. Can’t do that. Need to have the courts make that decision!

The power of regulatory agencies is a complicated issue going back to a Supreme Court decision that Conservatives hate called “Chevron”. But the bottom line for America is that Neil Gorsuch will be a vote, for 20, 30 or 40 years for “Deconstructing ‘The Administrative State’” and for an America where corporations are given the power to do whatever they want and where regulations that protect America and Americans bow to corporate profit . . . something that the “President of The Fascism Forever Club” would surely love.

Steve Bannon explicitly wants to “destroy the establishment”. Neil Gorsuch is his perfect tool to do just that. His nomination must be rejected and Donald Trump must be asked to listen to the guidance of Ronald Reagan and not Steve Bannon and appoint a mainstream judge like Sandra Day O’Connor or Anthony Kennedy to sit on our nation’s highest court until the 2050s or beyond. 41 of the 48 Senate Democrats can do this by standing up to Trump and Bannon and Filibustering this radical remake of America.

Richard Greene is a political communication strategist, a former attorney, national radio talk show host, judicial extern and Clore Warne Fellow at The Constitutional Rights Foundation and author of “Words That Shook The World: 100 Years of Unforgettable Speeches and Events”.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nei ... d348b3447f

Steve Bannon has a French sweetheart, and it’s not Marine Le Pen, the nationalist-populist politician who could become the country’s president in this spring’s election. According to media reports in France, the White House chief strategist recently expressed his admiration for the far-right intellectual Charles Maurras, a notorious anti-Semite sentenced to life in prison after World War II.

Bannon, once the head of the “alt-right” platform Breitbart News, embraces a number of discredited far-right intellectuals from pre-war Europe, including the fascist thinker Julius Evola. Like Maurras, Bannon also melds a devotion to nationalism with a commitment to the Catholic Church, which he has pointed to as an important ally in what he sees as the West’s struggle with Islam.

Maurras was a founder of France’s modern far-right, advocating monarchist principles that others later adopted and launching the Action Francaise, a militant street league that menaced its moderate and left-wing opponents. He expressed mixed feelings about the Nazis, backing the collaborationist Vichy regime they installed but remaining wary about German influence over his country.

After the war, a tribunal found him guilty of collaboration, stripping him of his civil rights, seat in the prestigious French Academy and sending him to prison for the rest of his life. When the verdict was read, he was said to have exclaimed that it was the “revenge of Dreyfus,” a reference to the Jewish army officer whose fate divided France in the 1890’s.

Stephen K. Bannon, left, President Trump's chief strategist, served as political adviser and business partner of Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah.The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and builtThe wealthy GOP donors and Trump’s chief strategist collaborated on at least five ventures.

By Matea GoldMarch 17, 2017

The champagne was flowing as hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah hosted a reception during the Cannes Film Festival last May to promote “Clinton Cash,” a film by their political adviser Stephen K. Bannon and the production company they co-founded, Glittering Steel.

The Mercers, Republican mega-donors who had spent millions on the failed presidential bid of Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and Bannon, then executive chairman of Breitbart News Network, were still weeks from formally aligning with Donald Trump’s campaign. But the festivities that balmy evening aboard the Sea Owl, the Mercers’ luxurious yacht, marked the growing influence of their financial and political partnership in shaping the 2016 campaign — and in encouraging the populist surge now reverberating around the world.

The Mercers’ approach is far different from that of other big donors. While better-known players such as the Koch brothers on the right and George Soros on the left focus on mobilizing activists and voters, the Mercers have exerted pressure on the political system by helping erect an alternative media ecosystem, whose storylines dominated the 2016 race.

Their alliance with Bannon provided fuel for the narrative that drove Trump’s victory: that dangerous immigrants are ruining the country and corrupt power brokers are sabotaging Washington.

Inside the partnership between Stephen Bannon and the Mercer family Embed Share Play Video3:47Before he became President Trump’s chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon was involved in several ventures with Republican mega-donor Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. (Bastien Inzaurralde, Dani Player/The Washington Post)The wealthy New York family and the former investment banker-turned-media executive collaborated on at least five ventures between 2011 and 2016, according to a Washington Post review of public filings and multiple people familiar with their relationship. The extent of their partnership has not previously been reported.

Through those projects, the Mercers and Bannon, now chief White House strategist, quietly built a power base aimed at sowing distrust of big government and eroding the dominance of the major news media.

The Mercers provided the money, while Bannon, working in tandem with Rebekah, acted as business partner and political guide. The family’s overarching strategy, according to people familiar with their giving, is to test various tactics to see which is most effective.

“The Mercers have a Silicon Valley approach to politics: Let a thousand entities bloom, and let’s see what works,” said one associate, who, like others close to the Mercers, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private family.

The Mercers poured money into Breitbart News, the media outlet they now partly own that under Bannon’s leadership gave voice to the nationalistic fervor Trump embraced. The family helped finance an investigative think tank that Bannon co-founded, the Government Accountability Institute, whose president wrote “Clinton Cash.” Glittering Steel, the Mercer film production company, then brought the book’s findings to the screen, portraying Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to a mass audience as a captive of wealthy interests.

The alliance continued with Cambridge Analytica, a data science company that did work for the Trump campaign, with the Mercers as investors and Bannon on the board. And they joined forces on a nonprofit watchdog group that is putting the spotlight on how public money is spent in the Mercers’ home state of New York.

While other donors gave more to support Trump’s presidential bid last year, the Mercers are now arguably the most influential financiers of the Trump era. Bannon, who went on to manage the final months of Trump’s campaign before joining the White House, is the senior architect of the president’s policy vision. He is joined in the West Wing by counselor Kellyanne Conway, a friend of Rebekah Mercer who led the family-funded super PAC that backed first Cruz and then Trump in the 2016 race.

People who know them say the Mercers, who soured on traditional political operatives, appreciated Bannon’s business savvy and share his belief that the conversation around politics must be changed for their ideas to prevail. For all of their power and privilege, both the family and their longtime adviser see themselves as outsiders, fighting the grip of elite institutions.

Driving the Mercers is a belief “that there is too cozy a relationship between the established media and the political class, and that there needs to be more accountability,” said Peter Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and author of “Clinton Cash.” “They loathe the fact that Washington has become a very wealthy town because of government power, at the expense of the American people.”

The Mercers declined to comment. Bannon declined to comment through a White House spokeswoman.

Trump himself paid homage to the family in December, weeks before moving into the White House, when he attended the Mercers’ elaborate annual costume party at their Long Island mansion. In a nod to the “Villains and Heroes” theme, Rebekah Mercer dressed like the Black Widow and her father as Mandrake the Magician, a comic-book superhero known for hypnotizing his targets.

Trump — who did not wear a costume — told the crowd that when the famously taciturn Robert Mercer urged him to hire Bannon and Conway last August, he knew he should listen because Mercer so rarely speaks, according to people in attendance.

donations by Mercer family, 2008–2016New York hedge fund executive Robert Mercer, his wife Diana and their middle daughter Rebekah contributed $41.3 million since 2008 to support the GOP and more than 100 federal candidates.$37.6 million total

Source: Federal Election Commission filingsJust a decade ago, few could have predicted the Mercers’ swift ascent in the money world. In the 2006 midterms, the family contributed only $37,800 to federal candidates and political committees — including $4,200 that Robert Mercer’s wife, Diana, gave to Clinton’s Senate reelection campaign, federal records show. The family’s foundation was similarly low key, giving away $292,000 in 2007, with nearly half going to a nonprofit math foundation started by one of Robert Mercer’s hedge fund colleagues, tax documents show.

But, after the election of Barack Obama, the family started to increase its political giving, tapping into newfound wealth.

In 2010, Robert Mercer was elevated to co-chief executive of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, whose closely held quantitative formulas have generated staggering returns. The following year, he began drawing annual earnings of $100 million and up, according to Institutional Investor’s Alpha list.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in 2010 paved the way for new forms of unlimited political spending — an opening seized upon by mega-donors on the right opposed to the Obama administration.

Between 2008 and 2016, they pumped at least $77 million in political donations and gifts from their family foundation into a vast universe of causes across the conservative landscape, according to campaign finance reports and tax filings.

Their foundation financed groups focused on international affairs, religious freedom, state policies, judicial issues and free enterprise. They poured millions into the Koch network and super PACs that promoted Republican candidates across the country.

Source: Internal Revenue Service filingsMuch of the Mercers’ political spending came in 2016 alone, when they funded a family super PAC with $15.5 million, including $2 million to support Trump once he secured the GOP nomination, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

The Mercers’ ideology resembles that of many conservative donors and opinion leaders. They believe in limited government and free markets, according to people who know them. They both have a staunch antipathy to the Clintons. Rebekah Mercer, who home-schools her four children, is strongly antiabortion, associates said.

But what sets the Mercers apart is their interest in finding new ways to shape the environment in which policy issues are debated, an impulse driven by their background in technology and finance.

[How a reclusive computer programmer became a GOP money powerhouse]

Robert Mercer is a renowned computer programmer who helped pioneer the field of machine translation. He made his fortune after leaving IBM for the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies in the early 1990s. He bought an estate with a harbor view on Long Island and a 203-foot yacht, which includes flourishes such as a four-deck-high tree carved from Peruvian mahogany and a rosewood self-playing Steinway baby grand piano.

Rebekah Mercer, 43, a former Wall Street trader, lives with her family in a sprawling triplex in a Trump-branded condominium on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and sits on the boards of the American Museum of Natural History and the Heritage Foundation. She and her two sisters also run an online gourmet cookie company.

She is the most political of Mercer’s three daughters, largely directing where the family puts its resources, and is known in conservative circles for her unyielding and skeptical questioning of candidates and established political operatives.

“They are right-wing nerds,” said George Gilder, an economist and former Ronald Reagan adviser who met Robert Mercer when the hedge fund executive began attending speeches Gilder has given touting bitcoin and a return to the gold standard.

“[Robert Mercer] believes in free markets, and he believes that technology is a positive force and that a lot of government is overregulating and suppressing economic creativity,” Gilder added.

One of the biggest beneficiaries of the Mercers’ donations over the past eight years has been the conservative watchdog Media Research Center, which collected $13.5 million from the Mercer Family Foundation between 2008 and 2014, tax records show.

The center’s projects include a website called CNSNews.com that publishes stories it says are ignored by the mainstream media — an early precursor to Breitbart News.

L. Brent Bozell III, founder of the Media Research Center, did not return requests for comment. But in an interview with The Post last year, he called the family “visionaries” when it comes to recognizing new ways to communicate with the public.

“What they are looking to do is build a movement, not just fund a movement,” Bozell said. “I don’t know where it is all leading, but I can tell you they are in it for the long haul.”

The Mercers’ partnership with Bannon began in 2011, thanks to an encounter that Robert and Rebekah had with Andrew Breitbart.

During a spring meeting of Club for Growth donors at the Ritz Carlton in Palm Beach, Fla., the Mercers sought out Breitbart after watching him deliver a talk about how to co-opt the political strategies used by liberals.

The conservative media entrepreneur, who liked to denounce the mainstream press as the Democrats’ “dominant partner in crime,” was arguing at the time that government policies could not be changed until conservatives seized control of the media narrative. The message resonated with the Mercers, according to a person familiar with their views.

Breitbart introduced them to Bannon, then a screenwriter and producer in Southern California who was directing a movie called “Occupy Unmasked” that featured Breitbart. It was co-produced by the conservative advocacy group Citizens United, whose allied foundation would later receive Mercer funds.

Bannon, whose peripatetic career had taken him from Wall Street to Hollywood, was at the time increasing his political focus, directing and producing a slate of conservative documentaries.

He had grown close to Breitbart and was urging the writer to expand his website, which originally operated out of Breitbart’s basement. As part of that effort, the Mercers invested $10 million in the enterprise in the summer of 2011, according to a person familiar with the transaction. When Breitbart died of a heart attack the following March, Bannon became executive chairman of the news outlet. The Mercers’ co-ownership of Breitbart News, along with chief executive Larry Solov and Breitbart’s widow, Susannah, was confirmed by the company last month.

The site was an early champion of Trump and the anti-establishment, populist movement that buoyed his campaign. It has also fielded intense criticism for airing inflammatory stories about immigrants, refugees and radical Islamists. Bannon once touted it as a “platform” for the alt-right, a small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state and whose adherents have espoused racist, anti-Semitic and sexist points of view.

Breitbart officials have disputed charges that their content promotes racism or Islamophobia. Solov did not respond to requests for comment.

According to a person familiar with her views, Rebekah Mercer has taken pride in the fact that Breitbart’s stories have affected the political debate by filtering into the mainstream media — an impact that has been affirmed by some independent researchers.

“They view Breitbart as a business and as a brand that gets a lot of traffic that is steering and shifting the way other outlets are covering these issues,” the person said.

While he was running Breitbart News, Bannon was also serving as the family’s political adviser, assessing the impact of think tanks, policy groups and super PACS they were considering financing, according to multiple people familiar with his role.

For Bannon, the partnership with the Mercers proved profitable.

In 2013, he reported earning $750,000 a year as chairman of Breitbart News, according to a rental application previously reported by The Post. He also received about $100,000 in salary that year as part-time chairman of the Government Accountability Institute, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service, first reported by The Post.

[During his political rise, Stephen K. Bannon was a man with no fixed address]

Electing candidatesMercer family donations to super PACs,candidates and political parties$15 million1050‘08‘10‘12‘14‘16Affecting policyDonations to think tanks and policy groups$15 million1050‘08‘10‘12‘14‘16Sources: Internal Revenue Service filings,Federal Election Commission filingsA strategic turning point came in 2012. The Mercers put $3 million behind super PACs that backed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, filings show, and when he lost, they became disenchanted with the Washington political class, according to multiple people familiar with their thinking.

Bannon urged them to take a different approach: Instead of helping consultants get rich, they should create their own network, according to associates.

In 2013, the Mercers became the principal investors in the data science firm Cambridge Analytica, which says it can target voters based on their personality types. It was spun out of a British company that advises governments around the world on how to conduct effective psychological operations.

Bannon served as vice president and secretary of Cambridge’s board, corporate filings in Delaware show, and was instrumental in pushing its expansion into the U.S. market, according to people familiar with his role.

[After working for Trump’s campaign, British data firm eyes new U.S. government contracts]

Other Mercer-Bannon projects had narrower aims. Together, Rebekah Mercer, her sister Jennifer and Bannon started a watchdog group in 2013 called Reclaim New York, which is using the state’s freedom-of-information law to try to disclose every local public expenditure.

One of the family’s most effective plays was helping finance the organizations that produced “Clinton Cash.”

The Mercer foundation gave $2 million between 2013 and 2014 to the Government Accountability Institute, the Tallahassee-based investigative think tank founded by Bannon and Schweizer.

Schweizer began writing “Clinton Cash” in late 2013, using the institute’s research about Clinton Foundation donors, much of the material plumbed from obscure foreign websites. The book was release in 2015, just as the presidential race was heating up.

That same year, the Mercers set up a production company called Glittering Steel, which Bannon co-founded, according to people familiar with his role.

At the Cannes screening of the “Clinton Cash” documentary, which kicks off with the image of a blood-stained $100 bill, Bannon told reporters that he envisioned the target audience to be liberals who might grow disenchanted with Clinton.

“I want as many progressives to see this as possible, because I think you have to understand how the Clintons, who proclaim that they support all your values, essentially have sold you out for money,” Bannon told Reuters.

The 2016 race offered an opportunity for the Mercers to deploy the network of groups they built with Bannon.

Breitbart News, whose coverage echoed Trump’s dark warnings about illegal immigrants and radical Islam, helped shape the campaign climate. A new study by a team of Harvard and MIT researchers, funded by a Soros-backed foundation, found that Breitbart drove coverage of the election in the conservative media and influenced mainstream news organizations.

Glittering Steel produced videos for the Mercer-funded super PAC Make America Number 1, which paid the production company about $700,000, according to campaign finance filings.

The super PAC directed another $5.5 million to Cambridge Analytica for consulting, data and ads. Cambridge was also paid at least $6 million for the work it did helping the Trump campaign identify and target voters, finance filings show.

Since the election, its parent company, SCL Group, has stepped up its pursuit of U.S. government contracts.

Bannon’s ascension last August as Trump’s chief adviser forced him to walk away from the Mercer operation. He stepped down from the Government Accountability Institute last summer when he joined the campaign and formally resigned his post at Breitbart after the election, according to information Solov gave a panel of congressional journalists last month.

In his absence, the Mercers are forging ahead. Rebekah Mercer is spearheading a new group called Making America Great to support Trump’s agenda, according to people familiar with the plans and corporate documents filed in Virginia.It remains unclear what relationship that group will have with an entity called America First Policies that has already been launched by other former Trump advisers.

The Mercers are looking to produce more film projects through Glittering Steel, as well as graphic novels. The graphic novel based on “Clinton Cash” was a New York Times bestseller.

And down in Tallahassee, one of their major causes, the Government Accountability Institute, is pressing forward with investigative projects.

Overseeing the effort as the group’s new chairwoman and Bannon’s successor: Rebekah Mercer.

Who knew letting foaming at the mouth anti Russia retards serious news access could be problematic

Mensch offers Times readers reason to trust her expertise: “In November, I broke the story that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court had issued a warrant that enabled the F.B.I. to examine communications between ‘U.S. persons’ in the Trump campaign relating to Russia-linked banks," she writes.

On Twitter, Times reporters lashed out.

“Please note that the NYT newsroom disagrees,” national security reporter Charlie Savage tweeted. Savage highlighted from his report this month knocking down the FISA claim: “To date, reporters for The New York Times with demonstrated sources in that world have been unable to corroborate that the court issued any such order.”

President Donald Trump has seen a significant positive shift in his polling numbers according to the latest Morning Consult poll.

For the first time in his presidency, a majority of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, according to the Morning Consult/POLITICO survey. The president's approval rating is at 52 percent, which is the first time he's cracked the 50-50 mark in this specific survey.

“If you look at the folks that are working at the White House today, that are involved in the Trump administration, I don’t think there’s any but one there that is under any type of investigation or surveillance activities at all.”

Who knew letting foaming at the mouth anti Russia retards serious news access could be problematic

Mensch offers Times readers reason to trust her expertise: “In November, I broke the story that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court had issued a warrant that enabled the F.B.I. to examine communications between ‘U.S. persons’ in the Trump campaign relating to Russia-linked banks," she writes.

On Twitter, Times reporters lashed out.

“Please note that the NYT newsroom disagrees,” national security reporter Charlie Savage tweeted. Savage highlighted from his report this month knocking down the FISA claim: “To date, reporters for The New York Times with demonstrated sources in that world have been unable to corroborate that the court issued any such order.”

So the FISA stuff was bs? Great. Love it

Wait, what? House intel chair says no one at White House under surveillance “but one”By Tommy Christopher |MARCH 19, 2017House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) turned heads this week when he said it was "very possible" that Donald Trump was swept up in surveillance intercepts of foreigners, and he has now added to the intrigue with a curious statement following a classified briefing with the FBI.

Fox NewsShortly after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) told reporters that it was “very possible” Donald Trump had been directly swept up in intelligence community surveillance, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee emerged from their own classified briefing with FBI Director James Comey looking visibly shaken.Now, Nunes has ratcheted up the intrigue, with an extremely curious statement — one which unfortunately flew right by his interviewer.Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace asked Nunes about members of “Trump World” being swept up in surveillance, and Nunes delivered a very specific reply:Video Player00:0000:32WALLACE: Do we think there was any surveillance of people in Trump World, or do we think that there was surveillance of other people like Ambassador Kislyak and that these folks who were talking to them were incidentally swept up in the conversations, in the intercepts?NUNES: Well, if you look at the folks that are working at the White House today, that are involved in the Trump administration, I don’t think there’s any but one there that is under any type of investigation or surveillance activities at all.It is possible that Wallace missed this answer because he thought Nunes was referring to disgraced former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. But Nunes specifically said referenced people “working in the White House today,” saying that all “but one” are free of investigation or surveillance.Comey will testify before the House Intelligence Committee this week, where, depending on the level of classification involved, the public may learn the identity of the “but one” to whom Nunes is referring.http://shareblue.com/wait-what-house-in ... e-but-one/

So just who is under surveillance? Devin Nunes is clearly referring to people currently working at the White House, so that rules out someone like Michael Flynn, who has already been fired. Could it be Steve Bannon? The state of Florida is reportedly investigating him for possible voter fraud, but that’s not the kind of thing that triggers a federal surveillance warrant. Is it Sebastian Gorka, whose alleged ties to a Hungarian Nazi group were brought to light this week? Or is someone currently on Trump’s White House staff still colluding with Russia in some kind of criminal manner?

President Donald Trump has seen a significant positive shift in his polling numbers according to the latest Morning Consult poll.

For the first time in his presidency, a majority of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing, according to the Morning Consult/POLITICO survey. The president's approval rating is at 52 percent, which is the first time he's cracked the 50-50 mark in this specific survey.

Kurt Eichenwald‏Verified account @kurteichenwald

Follow MoreTrump is 9 points away from hitting absolute bottom of approval ratings. (There are 28% on both sides that are always unmovable) In 60 days!

A friend is a yuge Trump supporter, he's convinced that "Michelle Obama is a man!"—he can tell you quite a bit about "Michael Obama"—and believes the Obama-Muslim-Marxist-Kenya-planning-world-takeover themes; he's former special forces and his friends who work in the Pentagon confirm it all.

But until someone mentioned Bannon the other day, he'd never heard of Steve Bannon.

Partial explanation?—his main gig is artist. I mainly blame the Facebook feed trough. I wonder, how many other Trumpites are unaware of such little details as Steve Bannon?

"Frankly, I don't think it's a good idea but the sums proposed are enormous."

Steve Bannon is the slimy Alt-Fringe delusional brain behind brain-less and unstable and bizarrely confused Tweeter-Of-Lies “president” Trump. And Bannon is a certified a right-wing extremist with a sickening penchant for the personal abuse of others and vile power trips. As Howard Fineman writes Bannon is:A master of cunning, apocalyptic, xenophobic narrative, Steve Bannon has given Trump a grander mission ― that of saving the Christian West from Islam, materialism, Wall Street, Hollywood, the Ivy League and the “Mainstream Media.” Reared and educated in a blue-collar, conservative Catholic family in Virginia, Bannon’s radical medievalism fits Trump’s royal conception of himself. But the risk is that the president will remain oblivious to what is going on outside the reality TV show Bannon has designed for him to live in, or that Trump will think that he has the kind of kingly authority that allows him to ignore the best parts of the Founders’ vision of a pluralistic, secular and welcoming America.In a new film for her TeleSUR program, The Empire Files, journalist Abby Martin exposes Trump’s chief strategist and his history of fanaticism, bigotry and profiteering.“Steve Bannon has been propelled over the last year from fringe media outlier to top propagandist of the U.S. empire as Trump’s chief strategist,” according to The Empire Files. “From his Wall Street roots and apocalyptic film career to his cultivation of alt-right bigots at Breitbart News, Abby Martin exposes Bannon’s true character in this explosive documentary.”Bannon, who served as CEO of Trump’s presidential campaign, honed his skills as the head of the far-right website Breitbart News. He proudly described the network as the “platform for the alt-right,” the white supremacist movement led by neo-fascists like Richard Spencer.The Empire Files details how Bannon cut his teeth making hard-right propaganda films. These works led Andrew Breitbart to describe him as the “Leni Riefenstahl of the Tea Party movement.”Ultra-conservative pundit Glenn Beck compared Bannon to Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s right-hand man and chief propagandist.WATCH!

Fancy slender skins of the 80s and 90s would have been embarrassed by this fuck. But then again, maybe not. I got into some heated arguments with some rotund skins after I saved their lives literally from certain death. I wonder what they went on to do as far as their racism. I'll never understand what propels them.

There is no me. There is no you. There is all. There is no you. There is no me. And that is all. A profound acceptance of an enormous pageantry. A haunting certainty that the unifying principle of this universe is love. -- Propagandhi